IFO/MnSCU Meet and Confer

Unofficial NOTES

April 16, 2004

IFO Present:  Jim Pehler, Becky Omdahl, Theresia Fisher, Debra Japp, Patrice Arseneault, Cindy Phillips, Chris Brown, Richard Gendreau, Steve Bohnenblust, Mary Kesler, Nancy Black, Cindy Webber

MnSCU Present:  Linda Baer, Chancellor McCormick, Roland Barden, Chris Dale, Jim Jorstad, John Ostrem, Steve Frantz, Gary Janikowski, Barb Miller, John O’Brien, Laura King

Called to order at 8:15am

Business Practices Alignment Committee:

IFO:  We had given you concerns last time, now we’re curious about the status.

MnSCU:  This is not a done deal.  107 recommendations are being worked on.  Those academic issues are going through the full consultation process.  We’re waiting for comments from all groups.  If you want me (L. Baer) to come to your academic affairs group, I’d be happy to.

Chancellor:  We didn’t roll that out very well and we didn’t bring it here to meet and confer first.  We should have done things differently.

IFO:  When you brought it to the Board of Trustees that caused us strong concern.  You said you were taking these recommendations and conferring with constituents.

MnSCU:  The web board is set up for comments.  We’re still rolling out.  There is no set time frame.  It will move through all the normal channels.  No dates are set.  80 of the 107 are invisible to faculty.

IFO:  We disagree.

Chancellor:  We have serious financial aid issues at several institutions.  It was a costly mess. 

IFO:  Thank you for recognizing our concerns.  We want to be part of the process.

MnSCU:  Linda Baer will work with you.

Chancellor:  It’s a trade off of values – we want efficiency.

New Agenda Items:

IFO:  We want to add two new agenda items:  MnSCU Foundation and check list of courses used in MN Transfer Curriculum and what the process is now.

Four Bold Ideas:

IFO:  We’re looking for a status report.  Where are you with the teacher center?

MnSCU:  This wasn’t a new idea.  There have been various attempts to start this.  There’s a great need in the Twin Cities for a teacher center.  We’ve heard this from Commissioner Yekke and Education Minnesota.  Deans have met and there’s a working group.  Campuses have given feedback.  They’ll have a campus liaison with a 50% time position (25% paid for by MnSCU and 25% by the institution).  We’ve had work groups with faculty (COPE and other faculty).  We’re working towards getting a coordinator.  Some campuses are ready to deliver this by the summer. 

Chancellor:  We’re losing that education business.

MnSCU:  We want a clear MnSCU presence in the cities.  It will be a coordinated effort.  We’re asking the school districts what they need.  Both on-line and classroom is being discussed.  There is no preference.

IFO:  We’re concerned with your timeline.  Is it realistic to be operational by fall?

MnSCU:  By the first part of May we should know more.

IFO:  Communication will diffuse some of the hostility.

Chancellor:  We saw Pawlenty early in the fall and went back a month ago.  We asked what was important on his agenda.  He asked us to think about some things if we had more funds.  We decided to talk and come up with 3-4 things he’d like.  We decided to invest time and energy – we may put this in our request next year.  These “4 Bold Ideas” are nothing new.  It came out of our strategic plan.

MnSCU:  We repackaged them in a bolder way.

IFO:  The faculty concern is that this popped up last fall and the money is a concern.

MnSCU:  The consultation will happen in the Biennial Budget committee meetings.

Chancellor:  You’re right.  We thought the Governor was hearing the same concerns (i.e. nursing) and thought these “4 Bold Ideas” would appeal to him.  We made an attempt and there is no money.

IFO:  It is too late for faculty to feel like the have a voice on this matter.  There is a better way to do this.

Barden:  The graduate education center is one of the oldest ideas floating around – at least since 1989 when I started.  It’s just “cute” to call them “bold”.  Collectively we have the strength to do this.  Let’s not let these policies and procedures get in the way.

IFO:  We disagree.  We want to adhere to the policies and procedures for faculty consultation.

224 Duty Days:

IFO:  Has there been any reconsideration for the 224 duty days?

MnSCU:  Yes, a memo was sent out to HR Directors explaining that they can increase the daily rate for compensation.  I only got one response to clarify my memo.

IFO:  We gave you examples on how this isn’t working.

MnSCU:  I guess I misunderstood and need to hear the problem again.

IFO:  224 duty days is an arbitrary limit.  There are a number of situations where faculty would need more than 224 duty days.  Why not allow the campus presidents to decide?

MnSCU:  Why not just increase compensation?

IFO:  The problem is 224 is unrealistic.  Why can’t the presidents make that decision?

MnSCU:  We decided in HR that 224 was a full faculty member.

Chancellor:  I say we give the presidents the autonomy – this issue is less significant.  Roland, are we missing something here?

Barden:  I don’t know that this is an issue on my campus.

Chancellor:  Have we ever found 224 to be abused to cause us to think the state university presidents couldn’t manage this?

IFO:  I know faculty who didn’t get paid.  They weren’t reimbursed for the level the Federal Government approved because of this limit.

Chancellor:  Maybe we should have more discussion with the state university presidents.

MnSCU:  Yes, we discussed this in HR.  The state university presidents didn’t express an issue with the number of days but with the rate of pay.

Chancellor:  We’ll ask John Shabatura to meet with the state university presidents about this.  My position is that we can trust presidents to lead an institution.  If we can’t trust them to handle this….  It looks like HR just decided this.

IFO:  Are there guidelines in deciding things like this?

MnSCU:  For the sake of consistency.  Campuses have a lot of autonomy.

IFO:  What is your role as opposed to the state university presidents?  I want to know rationale.  We need clarification of your role.  Article 10, subdivision 2 states the number of duty days will be set with mutual consent.

MnSCU:  We would never assign duty days without the consent of the faculty member.  The question is, is it appropriate for HR to suggest that you don’t need consent in excess of 224?  I haven’t heard this is an issue for the state university presidents.

IFO:  It sounds like you need consistency and make this up on your own.  It’s a top down management style.  This is a small issue with only a few faculty.  But the top down management is difficulty to swallow.  I think this issue is like the Business Practices Alignment Committee.  We saw this as a business practice.  That might be the HR delineation. 

MnSCU:  We in HR don’t say anything about it.  In this case it was a process driven payroll issue.  We can certainly look at it again. 

IFO:  Two things – “that isn’t academic” – I’ve heard that from administrators.  For a non-faculty member to assess what is not part of academics – that is a problem.  Second, the memo said you cannot assign more than 224 duty days.  There is a substantive difference.

MnSCU:  Yes, that’s what the memo said.

IFO:  We’d like a response within a week – I’m requesting this by next Friday that we have a letter from you – we’re coming up to summer sessions and faculty need to know.

Barden:  It seems to me you don’t need both.

Cooperative Buying:

IFO:  At an earlier meet and confer we suggested looking at cooperative buying for plagiarism software.

MnSCU:  Academic IT group is looking at this.  You have members on this committee.  We’re doing the research.

IFO:  We want to make sure there’s an opportunity for feedback.

MnSCU:  This will be lead by faculty in the Academic IT group.  This is more complicated than I thought.

Desire2Learn:

IFO:  Is Desire2Learn being mandated on campuses?

MnSCU:  Essentially we’re paying for the licenses.

IFO:  We heard this was being required by MnSCU.

MnSCU:  No, our office is not requiring campuses to adopt D2L, though the Board is clearly against multiple systems.  It is just being supported centrally.  Ongoing licenses are being paid for by MN Online.  We said we are going to be phasing out supporting other platforms.

IFO:  That’s not what we heard.

MnSCU:  After campus contracts expire, there will be training.

Allocation Model:

Chancellor:  I’ve said several times we’d train a person from each campus on the structure of the allocation model.  We’re fighting the passage of time and have lost some people.

MnSCU:  We made a lot of adjustments to recognize the various institutions.  The staff are creating a list of all the adjustments we’ve made.

IFO:  We don’t want our resources bleeding into the two-years.

MnSCU:  The state universities have done better on a per FYE basis.  We don’t have enough money to run the formula.  The 240M cut has made it worse.  We continue to look at things.  We committed to not creating a model that is tuition neutral.

IFO:  The state universities are dying.  We’re not getting enough support.  There is no other recourse.

Legislative Budget Update:

IFO:  Are we getting more cuts?

MnSCU:  Neither the House or Senate have added any cuts.  There is going to be a difficulty end to the session.

Policy 2.8 Student Life:

MnSCU:  The Board reviews policies every three years.  We have not gotten any negative feedback.

NCHEMS:

IFO:  I know formulas have changed but the current allocation process is using the NCHEMS on a slope.  There are many variables we can still use from the NCHEMS report.  We are strongly recommending this be done so when we go to the legislature we have that information.

MnSCU:  We share in your concerns.

Chancellor:  I hear we’re not competitive at hiring assistant professors.  I don’t think Minnesotans see themselves as the 50^th percentile.  We have to get the message out to Minnesota.

IFO:  If you want to do something do it when they’re campaigning.  Even if the data is not as specific as before, I don’t think we can afford to use FY02 data.

MnSCU:  We’ve got a data problem.

Chancellor:  I’m convinced we need a full court press.  I’m going to hire Ms. Kris Roberts, she’ll speak at the Board of Trustees in April.  How can we do better PR?  She’ll work with Linda Kohn and John Ostrem.  I’ll make sure she calls you, Jim.  We can’t wait.  We really need to try.

GLBT Support:

IFO:  Who is responsible in the Office of the Chancellor for GLBT issues/support?

MnSCU:  Steve Frantz.  What’s your particular issue?

IFO:  Support on the campus level.  There really isn’t an advocate in the Office of the Chancellor.  Our delegate assembly took up this issue and requested that the IFO request MnSCU’s support.

MnSCU:  Steve Frantz deals with the students.

IFO:  We’d like to identify a person in the Office of the Chancellor.  Due to funding, you’d assume this would get lumped into the campus diversity position and often those individuals are not equipped to handle GLBT issues.  We’ll get your thoughts at the next meet and confer.

Anti-Racism/Oppression:

IFO:  These programs are very time consuming.  Across the system, we are not getting recognition for Articles 22 and 25.  MnSCU people are still mispronouncing the Moorhead program TOCAR.  We need to look at how we can change the infrastructure so we can see this being implemented all over the system.

MnSCU:  We don’t tell campuses what constitutes legal activity.

Chancellor:  Linda Baer can take charge with this.

MnSCU Foundation:

IFO:  You had a news release.  Are there any assurances that this won’t interfere with our local associations?

Chancellor:  This used to be North Star.  Jim Daniel (works at Winona SU) is helping us out to talk to the state university presidents and the Board of Trustees.    In the first year or two we might identify who wants to work with us.  We’re looking for resources like Bremer – to work with accounts not used by the local campuses.  An executive director was hired; she’ll work with the foundation to find partnerships.  We can give Jim the Jim Daniel recommendation.  It is not my intention to compete with the campuses.  There’s a need for urban teachers of color.

Transfer:

MnSCU:  There’s a checklist of evaluation criteria on MN Transfer Curriculum (April 30) being created.  Faculty will be given opportunity for significant feedback.  This came from Linda Lade.  We’ll put this on the next meet and confer agenda.

IFO:  What are Larry Selin’s credentials?

MnSCU:  He’s worked in this area for some time.

IFO:  The timeline we’ve seen is too short.  We have heard nothing since September about transfer issues.  I want assurance that this will not happen over the summer.

MnSCU:  No, not over the summer.

10:35 adjourned.